


Trail Games

by girl_aflame



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 07:03:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5119418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl_aflame/pseuds/girl_aflame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forced to volunteer at the annual Spooky Walk, Katniss runs into an old classmate. Literally. (Prompt: Orange.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trail Games

**Author's Note:**

> Fall fluff. Happy Halloween! :-)

When the “mandatory volunteer hours” sign-up sheet made the rounds at National Honor Society, Katniss signed it without looking. Blame it on delirium: she’d had to cover a shift at Sae’s for Glimmer last night, which turned into a double when Glimmer “had a reaction to her new makeup.” She’s already not thrilled that she’s going to have to devote every Friday night in October to volunteering instead of actually making money. So when Gale whistled and said, “Oh, this is gonna be good,” Katniss had taken the sheet from him and assumed she could trust her best friend. 

She really regrets that now.

“BLARGGGGH!” Gale emerges from behind the birch tree and lumbers toward a group of preteens, all of whom jump back, cling to each other, and scream. The first ten times, she could understand their fear. Gale made a decently fearsome zombie with fake blood oozing down his forehead, tattered clothing (he’d actually rolled around in the dirt for “dramatic effect”), and crazy eyes. Haymitch Abernathy, Chief Operating Organizer of the volunteer operation that is the Spooky Walk, had trotted out the golf clap when Gale walked into the night’s meeting. “At least one of you damn kids gets it,” Haymitch had said, his gaze lingering on Katniss. Message received. Whatever. She’s not being paid enough to be here.

By the eleventh time Gale leaps out from behind the trees, she’s on the verge of a migraine and wondering if she really needs National Honor Society on her college applications. (Application, singular. Because where can she afford to go apart from Panem Community College?)

“Gale, what the hell is wrong with you?” she says when the girls have passed. She doesn’t miss how a couple of them glance back, and not fearfully, toward Gale. Gluttons for punishment, obviously. “Why do you enjoy traumatizing children?”

“It’s not traumatizing. It’s volunteering my services,” Gale says like there’s a difference, which in her book, there is not. “Look, Catnip, you need to step up your game. I’m gonna have laryngitis by the end of the night, and I’m pretty sure you can’t scare anyone by just sitting there and being judgmental.”

Katniss shrugs and immediately scratches where the hunting jacket rubs against her skin. “I’ve been told I have a frightening resting bitch face.”

“You’re not in a costume.”

“I blend in with the scenery,” Katniss counters. Honey brown hunting jacket, deep blue denim jeans, black boots – practical without costing extra money. Total win.

“You couldn’t even bother to throw on a white sheet.”

“Why waste a perfectly good sheet and then have to wash it after?”

Gale’s deep-red-painted eyebrows furrow, but whatever he’s about to say next is cut off by the telltale crunch of feet over leaves on the dirt path. In the distance, a chainsaw buzzes as children (and definitely some adults) scream. (Katniss has to admit that Johanna is pretty freaking terrifying with that thing.)

A thin ribbon of light bobs ahead on the trail. She listens for giggles but hears none. Probably adults coming through. In a town as small as District 12 (hell, a town so small that nobody had bothered to give it a more creative name), the annual Spooky Walk is considered excellent entertainment. (Bonus points if you have vodka in your water bottle, like she suspects Haymitch did during their meeting.)

“This one’s yours,” Gale hisses to her.

“Oh, come on.”

“I’m going to tell Miss Trinket that you’re slacking on your hours.”

“Bullshit,” Katniss says, ignoring the trickle of fear that Gale might be serious. “I already signed in.”

The flashlight weaves closer and the footsteps fall heavier. She blinks against the white light. How many people? Based on the sounds of the walking, two or three.

“Fine,” Gale says. “Bet I’m scarier than you are.”

It’s the taunt that gets her. If there’s anything Gale knows gets under her skin, it’s the implication that she’s lesser than him.

Even if it is totally stupid.

So when the shadow rounds the obstacle that’s their cue – a fake tombstone that reads “MYRA MAINS” – she shoves Gale aside, steps into the path, and screams.

And collides with the flashlight’s holder.

They tumble to the ground and as her elbow hits the dirt and her ankle kicks a branch, all she can think is, _If I break a limb, they can’t make me keep doing this, right?_

“Oof,” the voice next to her says. Right, she basically just assaulted a visitor. She rises to her feet hastily, brushing the dead leaves from her pants, and prepares her sincerest apology. From the trees, Gale snickers.

She looks down to meet Peeta Mellark’s blue eyes. 

The guy whose head she’d stared at for the better part of ten years at school, until last year, when he’d gotten into that car accident and then never returned. She’d heard that he’d started attending Capitol Senior, the private school across town. From murmurs in the hallway, it sounded like his friends – the ones who could afford new cars on the first day of school (or their parents could), the ones who played sports and were the subject of the morning announcements – hadn’t heard much from him since then.

Of course, Alexis Clove wouldn’t let Peeta Mellark go off in peace without throwing some barbs behind his back. “I hear he had a mental breakdown,” she said in the locker room, emphasizing “mental breakdown” like it was an infectious disease.

“No, he injured his leg,” Delly Cartwright replied, but that wasn’t enough to keep the seed from being planted.

Right now, Peeta Mellark doesn’t look like a guy who’s recovering from a mental breakdown.

He does, however, look like he’s seen a ghost.

“I am so sorry,” she blurts out. “I’m, uh, not very good at this.”

“Ya think?” Gale mutters.

“Katniss?” Peeta says, and even in the dark, she can make out the blue in his wide eyes. “Katniss Everdeen?”

Katniss laughs weakly, confident that her face is burning red as she extends a hand to help him to his feet. Screw college applications. “Uh, yeah.”

“Wow.” Peeta rises to his feet, a little unsteady – God, she hopes she didn’t give him a concussion – but his eyes never leave hers. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Yeah, the show’s here every Friday,” she says with false enthusiasm.

“Hurry up,” Gale hisses, “I hear a bunch of giggles.”

“Gale takes this very seriously,” Katniss explains to Peeta.

“I can see that,” Peeta says, deadpan. “It’s a vocation.”

“Whatever,” Gale says, waving at Katniss in frustration. “I got this. Go.”

“Go…where? Home?” That was the place she’d wanted to go all night. But now that it’s offered to her, she feels oddly reluctant.

“Incoming.” Gale’s voice drops. “Three. Two.”

Without thinking, she grabs Peeta’s forearm and drags him ahead onto the trail.

Decision made.

#

What do you say to a guy that you’ve never spoken to before but spent an idiotic amount of time memorizing the exact shade of blond of his hair? (Flaxen, she’d decided.)

Luckily, Peeta saves her. Behind them, girls scream in chorus and then burst out laughing. “Is that a pirate ship?”

She squints ahead to where the trail curves around a small pond. “Yeah. I mean, if you consider a dinghy a pirate ship. And Finnick a pirate.”

Peeta chuckles softly. “I can see Finnick pulling off the Jack Sparrow swagger.”

“Please don’t tell him that. We’ll never hear the end of it.”

“We?” Peeta kicks aside a branch and wobbles for a moment.

“Yeah. National Honor Society.” She’s not sure why she feels the need to explain, but she does. As they approach the “pirate ship,” the trees clear momentarily. Over the pond, she catches a glimpse of the stars in the clear night sky. Soon, it’ll be winter. “We’re all here for our volunteer hours.”

“Sounds cool.” Peeta says the words like he genuinely means them. “I’d love to do something like this.”

Weirdo. Still, the idea warms her. The fact that Peeta would enjoy something goofy like this – it’s kind of sweet, actually. And she bets he wouldn’t be as irritating about it as Gale is. “So, um, how’s Capitol?”

“It’s all right,” Peeta says. “I miss the people at Twelve, for sure. But Capitol has better accommodations.”

“For what?” she asks, and then immediately regrets it. This is why she can’t talk to people and try to make friends. She always has something stupid to say.

Peeta chuckles a little. Then he pauses on the trail, leans over, and tugs up his right jeans leg.

She catches a glimpse of metal before approaching footsteps run up behind them and they’re forced to jump to the side. “Oh, my God. From the accident, right? I’m sorry–”

“Not your fault,” Peeta says quickly, sounding as uncomfortable as she feels. “Anyway, my mom wasn’t happy with the fact that the high school has like twelve hundred stairs and a broken elevator, so she insisted I transfer to Capitol.”

“Oh, wow.” She remembers Peeta standing in front of the class with a Power Point on the Great Gatsby, and she’d been struck by the way he’d made eye contact with everyone in the class rather than staring at the screen and mumbling through the presentation (as she’d done). He still looks like the same Peeta: broad shoulders, slightly too-long blond hair, quick and easy smile, but there’s something guarded behind his eyes now.

“I’ve gotten pretty good at getting around,” Peeta says, as though he knows what she’s thinking. “I was getting stir crazy at home, sitting there by myself, so I decided to live dangerously tonight.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” She forces a smile.

For a moment, she considers suggesting the shortcut she’d found earlier that leads directly to the parking lot. But when she opens her mouth, she quickly closes it. She really doesn’t know Peeta Mellark, but something tells her he’s not the type to take the easy way out.

Instead, she points out the roots up ahead and Peeta sidesteps them. She offers commentary on various elements of the trail, for a complete lack of other things to say, and Peeta chuckles and asks questions at all the right parts. At one point, she stumbles over a fallen glow stick and Peeta steadies her. His grip is firm, commanding – thank God it’s too dark for him to see her blush.

She was right. She shouldn’t underestimate him.

“What are your plans for next year?” Peeta says as they maneuver around a cluster of shouting clowns, also known as Cato and Marvel. Marvel attempts a cartwheel, perhaps in an attempt to show off or terrify them with his bent legs, and flops into a bush. Cato breaks character to say, “Whoa, bro. Whoa.”

“Uh, Panem Community College, probably.” A.k.a. definitely. “You know, thirteenth grade.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Peeta says seriously. “I’m planning on applying to their culinary program. Not really feeling ready to go away to school right now.”

“I don’t know if going away will ever be an option for me,” she says quietly.

They fall into a silence that’s punctuated by the leaves crunching beneath their feet, the uneven tread of Peeta’s steps, the wind sighing through the branches, and the shouts and laughter of others on the trail.

And somehow, for the first time all night, her shoulders relax. She inhales the earthy smell of woods and night, of distant burning fire. The woods have always been her home. Sure, her family could use the money she’d be making tonight if she were working. But right now, she’s reminded of her roots. The late afternoon sun filtered through the trees and streaked the dirt with gold as she followed her father home from hunting. Summers mornings spent picking her way through thorns and fog, searching for berries.

Then the back of her hand brushes up against the back of his and she’s immediately whisked back into the moment. How much of the walk is left?

Is it wrong that she hopes it’s much longer than she thinks it is?

Peeta asks about District 12’s wrestling team (which she’d stopped paying attention to after he’d transferred, but there’s no way she would ever admit that). Soon they’re talking comfortably about classmates and teachers, her job at Sae’s and his weekends spent working at his family’s bakery. She’s surprised by how easy it is to walk alongside him and hold a conversation. Heck, she doesn’t like talking in general, and here she is chatting with Peeta Mellark without looking for an out.

In fact, she’d be happy to keep doing it.

“Thank you,” Peeta says after they’ve narrowly escaped Johanna and her chainsaw. (Seriously, if Katniss had been a fraction of a second slower, Johanna would have chopped off her hair.)

“For what?”

“For treating me like a person.” The moonlight now crisscrossing through the tree branches illuminates his face, serious as he looks down at her. Her heart thumps. “For not acting like I’m damaged goods.”

“If anyone’s damaged goods, it’s me,” she says with a weak laugh.

“I never saw you like that,” he says. When he reaches down to brush away a stray tendril from her braid, she really hopes he doesn’t hear the embarrassing hitch of her breath. And when his hand trails down the arm of her jacket and meets hers, their fingers lacing together, she’s confident he can hear her heart beating. 

“So, um.” For the first time all night, Peeta seems uncomfortable. “Not sure what you’re up to next Friday night, but I was told there’s this haunted trail with a really cool girl who’s kind of intimidating until you get to talking to her.”

_Told you so, Gale. Resting bitch face for the win._ She quickly banishes any thought of Gale, because is this really happening?

“It’s a date.”


End file.
